Dustin, you have a complex situation on your computer, and I hope that with a little time, I can explain what you are up to, and offer some advice.

* Your logins are mutually exlusive. The computer sees PERSONAL as a different user than BUSINESS. Different users mean different settings. The computer thinks that PERSONAL belongs to person A, and BUSINESS belongs to person B, and they cannot see each other's settings. User accounts are built that way... and accounts are designed not to mix.

* Your settings are stored in a Windows Concept called Profiles. By looking in the Documents and Settings folders, you are seeing the physical manifstation (evidence) of these profiles. Again, they are meant to be mutually exclusive of other profiles. PERSONAL should not use BUSINESS profile. The registry keys and other particulars of the OS will not work well with the mixing, and you could lose registrations. This is why Photoshop on PERSONAL is out of sync with Photoshop on BUSINESS.

* The Default User profile provides a baseline for new profiles to be built from. It is possible to seed new accounts with information stored here.

* All Users is a nice place to put installed applications, and other materials that you want each account to have access to. Unfortunately, it provides for the shortcuts and NOT for individual settings. XP was designed, as mentioned earlier, for the isolation of these accounts for business-like reasons... could you imagine the internal duress between two people working on the same computer, perhaps one on 1st shift, and the other on 2nd? He wants Blue. She wants Yellow. Then they start changing things on purpose... individual profiles keep these settings unique.

*Email settings also respect profile lines.

Also, do not think that you can copy one profile's contents to another one. While the files will physically move from one place to the other, Windows (2000 at least will) detect that something is not right, and will create a PROFILE.000 on the fly, and they will not have your modifications contained within them.

If I were you, I would condense your computer down to two accounts: your main account as a power user, with most but not administrative privs. Collapse the Business, Personal, Entertainment, and such down into a single Dustin account. The other account on the computer would be the Administrator account that you only need / should use when you have specific administrative things to do (software patches, antivirus control).

DO NOT USE your administrative (Administrator) account for day - to - day activities. If you get a virus, or you click on the wrong delete option, the Administrator account will allow you to make your computer unusable. Having a sub account (a user account) is a smart idea to protect the computer from yourself.

I have several computer systems in my house (Macintosh, Linux, Windows 2000). I get along with two accounts (Admin, Christian) on all of them, and I do not see the headaches that you are inflicting on yourself.

You asked for some books and materials. Mark Minasi has written some excellent books under the Sybex publishing group on books about Windows. Look for Mastering Windows (insert Server, server 2003, XP) at larger bookstores near you. He writes very well with examples, and his books are entertaining, as he takes jabs at Microsoft and some of the goofy ways things are done.

hello danny,
what i think is that you should change your operating system windows xp to windows 98
windows 98 is more secure and has less errors. windows xp is not safe and more if you have DSL internet.